John Laughland

Friday March 16, 2018

Congratulations to Craig Murray for getting there first. The colorful former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, turned anti-establishment dissident after he was sacked from the Foreign Office in 2004, has published on his blog some key texts by authoritative scientists which cast serious doubt on the British government's claims about what happened to the former double agent, Sergei Skripal, and why.

Murray – and his sources – have unearthed texts from 2016, 2013 and 1995 by, respectively, a scientist at Porton Down, the secret British military chemical weapons installations which is 20 minutes from Salisbury where Skripal was found last week; a scientist at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the statutory body created by the 1997 Convention on Chemical Weapons but which London has ignored and bypassed in its spat with Moscow; and by the Russian defector scientist, Vil Mirzayanov, who is the sole source for the claim that the Soviet Union started to manufacture so-called novichok ("newbie") nerve agents in the 1980s, allegedly now used to poison Skripal.

Two of these texts, for which Murray does not provide links, are available online here and here. The first two show, long before anyone had heard of Sergei Skripal, that the existence of novichoks has not been confirmed. Mirzayanov's 1995 paper says that they could be manufactured anywhere, for instance by any laboratory which can make fertilizer or pesticide, and that the factory where they were allegedly developed by the Soviet Union is in Uzbekistan, a country which has not been under Moscow's control since 1991 but where the Americans had a military base until 2005.read on...

Friday February 21, 2014

To discuss the Ukrainian crisis in terms of a choice between Europe and Russia is misleading for several reasons.

First, the European issue has been ruthlessly exploited by the Ukrainian opposition and its Western backers as an excuse for overthrowing the government illegally and by force. Opposition leaders have never distanced themselves from the most radical elements on the streets of Kiev, even though these include neo-Nazis.

On the contrary, they have done everything to use their violence as a bargaining chip in their battle with the government. Let us never forget that the majority of the 25 deaths on the night of 18 – 19 February were murders committed by the protesters: 9 policemen were shot dead or stabbed to death, while 3 members of the governing party and a journalist were also killed.

Wednesday December 4, 2013

Pro-western forces in Ukraine will find it hard to provoke a new revolution, particularly as a potential EU trade agreement would not affect the constitution, John Laughland, director of studies at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, told RT.

RT: The Ukrainian parliament is right now debating a government no-confidence vote. Would you bet on the prime minister and his Cabinet in this situation?

John Laughland: I probably would. I think the rumors of a coup are to be taken with some seriousness but I would be surprised if the events of 2004, the Orange Revolution, could be repeated. I think Hegel said, or was it Marx,“History repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce." I think it will be difficult for the pro-western forces in Ukraine to pull off the same trick twice, particularly since clearly this decision about the trade agreement with Europe is only a decision about the trade agreement. The issue is not something constitutional, like an election, as it was nearly 10 years ago.

Thursday November 28, 2013

This is an excerpt from RPI Academic Advisor John Laughland's recent RT interview. -ed.

Joining an old European geopolitical and ideological project would have been catastrophic for the Ukrainian economy, political expert John Laughland told RT, noting that it was actually the EU, not Russia, blackmailing Ukraine into signing a suicide note.

RT: The European foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton says Ukraine's U-turn is indeed a major disappointment. Who is the biggest loser here - Ukraine or the EU?

John Laughland: The biggest loser here is the EU because the EU has conceived this Association Agreement, like all the other agreements that it tries to sign with the former Eastern European states, as a geopolitical project. It is very important to understand that in the midst of all the accusations against Russia it is actually the EU which sees Eastern expansion as a geopolitical and indeed an ideological project.read on...

Thursday July 11, 2013

It’s very revealing and symbolic that President Morales’ plane should have been forced to land in a European Union country after the withdrawal of overflight rights by other EU countries, because this, of course, shows how the European poodle jumps at the American circus master’s command. European governments are very obviously under the thumb of the Americans, they have shown this very blatantly.

And the reason why I say it’s symbolic is that the abuses which Snowden has revealed -- the explosion of espionage activity against US citizens and against the people around the world by the US government -- is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is that there has been massive increase in cooperation in intelligence sharing between the United States and its European Union allies in the last ten years and certainly since 9-11. So it’s entirely appropriate, if you like, that the whistleblower should have been attempted to be caught by European Union countries, because the problem that he has revealed concerns intelligence sharing between the European Union and America as well as the increase of espionage by the American security forces.read on...